press release from the Institute for Justice
New Jersey's method of financing police and prosecutors through civil forfeiture is unconstitutional, Superior Court Judge G. Thomas Bowen of Salem County ruled in a December 11 opinion.
Under New Jersey's civil forfeiture law (N.J.S.A 2C:64-6a), prosecutors and police had been entitled to keep the money and property confiscated from individuals through the state's civil forfeiture law, thus giving them a direct financial stake in the outcome of forfeiture efforts. The court ruled that this provision violates the Due Process clauses of the US and New Jersey constitutions.
"We are thrilled with the court's ruling," said Scott Bullock, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a Washington, DC-based public interest law firm that litigated the New Jersey case. "The decision will ensure that police and prosecutors make decisions on the basis of justice, not on the potential for profit."
From 1998 to 2000, New Jersey police and prosecutors collected an astonishing nearly $32 million in property and currency through the application of the civil forfeiture law. During that same period, on average, close to 30% of the discretionary budgets of county prosecutor offices came from civil forfeiture proceeds. As the judge recognized in his opinion, forfeiture money has been used for "rent for a motor pool crime scene facility, office furniture, telecommunications and computer equipment, automobile purchase, fitness and training equipment purchase, a golf outing, food, including food for seminars and meetings, and expenses of law enforcement conferences, at various locations."
As the court further declared: "In theory and in practice, there is no limitation upon the motivation for enlargement to which a county prosecutor is subject in deciding upon seizure of property.. This court concludes, that the augmentation of the county prosecutors' budgets... provides to those in prosecutorial functions financial interests which are not remote as to escape the taint of impermissible bias in enforcement of the laws, prohibited by the Due Process clauses of the New Jersey and US Constitution."
By ruling the statute unconstitutional, the decision affects every county in New Jersey. And the decision could prove a harbinger of future challenges to laws in other states. David Smith, an Alexandria, VA, attorney who has written a treatise on forfeiture laws and is a former deputy chief of the Department of Justice's asset forfeiture office declared last month, "This is the single most important civil forfeiture case being litigated anywhere." Several other states and the federal forfeiture law also permit police and prosecutors to keep forfeited property and proceeds.
"We will challenge laws in other states to guarantee that the due process rights of property owners are protected when confronted with civil forfeiture," Bullock added.
The case, State of New Jersey v. One 1990 Ford Thunderbird, was led by perhaps an unlikely crusader, Carol Thomas of Millville in southern New Jersey. Her case arose in 1999 when Thomas' then 17-year-old son used her Thunderbird without her knowledge and consent to sell marijuana to an undercover officer. Her son was arrested and punished, but that did not end the matter. The State still went after the car by filing a civil forfeiture action because the car was involved in illegal activity. Ironically, at the time of her son's arrest, Thomas was a seven-year veteran officer with the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office. Thomas has subsequently left the sheriff's department and decided to fight abusive forfeiture laws.
In 2001, the Institute for Justice scored a first-round victory in this case when it secured the release of Thomas' car. The judge allowed Thomas' challenge to New Jersey's unconstitutional profit motive to continue, and now the judge has declared the New Jersey statute to be unconstitutional.
Visit http://www.ij.org for further information on the Institute for Justice. Visit http://www.fear.org for further information on asset forfeiture.
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